Practice is perfect

For seven days Moshe set up the Mishkan, did the avodah, and took it all down again, and the Shechinah never came. Then, on the day she finally rested there, the Torah calls it the eighth day, and names the whole parsha Shemini. Why not call it the first day? Rav Dovid Feinstein finds a lesson in that single word, and it reaches into davening, the Shabbos table and the way we count Sefiras HaOmer. A couple who once asked a gadol when they should start preparing to be parents received an answer that is hard to forget.